The King in Yellow Chapter Nineteen

COLLECTION

The receptionist glanced at Zora’s documents and stamped her register then reached back without looking to pass her the room key.

“Wake up call?” she asked, brightly.

“I will be leaving in the small hours.” Zora replied. “That’s why I’m paying in advance”.

“Of course, of course” the woman said and turned her attention back to the evening newspaper then, suddenly, looked up and fixed her with a curious stare. “Excuse me for asking” she began, hesitantly, “but you wouldn’t have a married sister named Zora, would you”?

“I cannot think of anyone with that name in my family” Zora answered, easily. “Do I remind you of someone”?

The receptionist turned her newspaper around on the counter and pointed at one of the faces in a spread of photographs commemorating victims of the recent landslide in the Svitavian Heights. “She looks very like you” she said, blushing slightly “so I was worried you might have lost someone”. It was the photograph from Zora’s state identity card.

“I see.” Zora replied. “Bless you but, no, it’s just a coincidence”. She smiled winningly, took the key and headed to her room to wait. On the stairs she encountered a thin and haggard man, shabbily dressed, coming the other way. He blocked Zora’s path and stood arrogantly looking her up and down.

At last he spoke, evidently satisfied with what he saw “Come to room fourteen at eleven”.

Zora looked away while she hurried to compose herself. She had not expected to be confronted with any decisions after finding the Yellow Sign but this man could be involved in her collection or he could be a random stranger in search of street-walkers. And then she realised that it did not matter – that nothing that could happen to her now would ever matter.

“Room fourteen” she confirmed.

“How much extra for special services?” the man asked, his lean face twisted into an evil leer. Zora fluttered her lashes and favoured him with a coarse smile.

“No extra” she purred, feeling dirtied.

At five minutes past the hour, Zora went to room fourteen. The thin man answered her knock in a string vest and stepped aside for her to enter. Slamming the door closed behind her he tore the handbag from her grip, secured her wrists in a pair of steel cuffs and pushed her face against the wall. He pulled up her skirt and forced two fingers brutally into her arse then began pumping them in and out. She let out a strangled cry of pain and shock. With his fingers still hooked inside her he drew her into the room, bent her over the dresser and continued his violent fingering. Zora put her cheek to the chipped veneer and groaned. Again, he dragged her across the room and pushed her to the floor before the bed. Looking back at him over her shoulder Zora saw the riding-crop and arched her back, spreading her knees apart to present her ample arse for punishment. He lay on with a will and she bit down hard on the cold chain between her wrists to keep from screaming as twelve bright stripes were carved into her yielding flesh. There was a brief respite while he dragged off his trousers and pants, then he pushed her over onto her back with his foot and squatted above her head, pressing his lean crotch to her face. Zora rained hot kisses onto his balls and along the crease of his arse in a frenzy of submission and allowed her chained hands to roam down over her belly to pinch at her clit. He made her spend a long time licking and sucking at his arsehole while his fist pumped his hard cock and she writhed sensuously beneath him with a cruelly slow finger sliding in and out of her cunt.

Just as her moans became throatier and more urgent, he jumped up and dragged her by the hair to throw her face down over the edge of the bed. With one thrust he drove his dry cock deep into her arse and began to buck his bony hips furiously against her. Zora’s face twisted in agony and she sank her teeth into the sleeve of her jacket, growling, while his knob pounded into her. The old bed rattled and creaked for many minutes until he grunted and his spunk splashed over her cheeks and thighs. They moaned together. After a while he re-lit a half-smoked cigarette, rolled over, and unlocked the cuffs. Zora smoothed down her skirt and collected her bag. She saw a handful of banknotes on the bedside but just blew a kiss to where he sprawled on the bed, naked from the waist down, and went back to her room to wait. Not a word had been spoken since they had met earlier on the stairs.

His room was in darkness when she passed it in the dead of night and slipped out of the hotel to be collected in a back street.

In the convent Katya wept with frustration as she watched, inverted, while the men slaked their lusts on the headless corpse of their victim – the same pale body which had been pressed so tenderly against her own moments earlier. She blinked away the tears and her eyes fell on the head labelled “Elena” hanging in the centre of the wall facing her. Some craft had preserved the beautiful features as though in life, as though her mouth were ready to speak, or to kiss.

Some miles distant, on an isolated farm in the Svitavian foothills, a video camera was set up with the bare brick wall at the side of the barn as a backdrop, and Kristina stood in front of it holding a newspaper wrapped in a sheet of green sugar-paper – the front page of some future edition of the Morning Post would be imposed on it later.

“The Circessya Liberation Army regret that they cannot permit me to leave their custody until a full statement of their demands has been published in the Morning Post and the Evening News” she read out, deadpan. The camera was turned off.

“And that is all?” asked Tural suspiciously. There was a hard edge to his voice.

“Just that” Rashid insisted. “For us, this is nothing. The video is a ploy to mislead whoever is looking for her. At five this morning they will collect her and the tape – and the camera; we only have to keep her safe until then. Brothers – this is easy money”.

“But we don’t know who the fuck they are” put in Mikhail.

“That is best for everyone” Rashid replied. “I’m not curious about them at all, and nor should you be”. He stood and looked around the dark farmyard. “Bring her inside the house”.

Mikhail slid his Uzi along the kitchen counter and grabbed a bottle of cherry vodka by the neck. “I say we have her now” he declared, to no-one in particular.